scholarly journals Naming an unknown animal: the case of the sloth (Folivora)

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-343
Author(s):  
Dominik Berrens
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
The Given ◽  
Written Sources

The sloth (Folivora) is a mammal from Central and South America that struck the early modern ( c.1500–1800) European naturalists as especially odd. Hence, descriptions and depictions of this animal featured in many texts from this period. Apart from its physiognomy and its behaviour, the naming of the sloth was discussed in detail, and scholars came up with various names and etymologies for the animal. Several European and Amerindian languages were involved in this complex naming process, while Latin played a decisive role as the lingua franca in establishing a scholarly discourse. The paper focuses on written sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it tries to reconstruct how the given names and their etymologies were connected to the perceived behaviour and the physiognomy, and what this might tell us about the conceptions behind these. The results are compared to similar findings from anthropology and ethnobiology.

“What’s in a name?”

Target ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Snell-Hornby
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Functionalist Approach ◽  
Specific Definition

Terminology has often proved to be a problem in scholarly discourse, and Translation Studies is a case in point. Even the name of the discipline has been an issue since James Holmes brought it up in 1972, and the central concept of the time, equivalence, despite incessant debate and revaluation in some schools of thought, has in others long since been discarded as an illusion. Basically there are three possibilities open to the scholar wanting to introduce a new technical term: – As in the case of norm (Toury), a word from general language can be used in a specified sense and defined as such. The danger arises that it can be misinterpreted and used differently in other languages (as with Vermeer’s Norm). – the invention of completely new terms, as with Justa Holz-Mänttäri’s Botschaftsträger. – A word is taken over from a classical dead language, such as Latin or Greek, and given a specific definition for the theory concerned, as was the case with skopos in the functionalist approach. Referring to experience in editing the Handbuch Translation, the essay discusses this issue in detail. It also deals with the use of English as a lingua franca in the metadiscourse of Translation Studies.

scholarly journals THE STYLISTIC FUNCTIONING OF SCRIPTURAL ALLUSIONS IN AN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH PLAY “JOHAN BAPTYSTES PREACHYNGE” BY J. BALE

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1001-1007
Author(s):  
A.A. Khavronich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Semantic Expansion ◽  
Early English ◽  
The Given ◽  
Selection Of

The given article analyzes the peculiarities of the stylistic functioning of allusions to the Holy Scripture within one religious play belonging to the modern early English period, namely “Johan Baptystes Preachynge” produced by a dramatist J. Bale. The analysis is performed from the standpoint of linguopoetics. We consider stylistic features via the correlation of form and meaning, dissection of the conceptual component, juxtaposition with medieval plays representing adaptations of the same scriptural plot. Within the framework of this analysis we identify and assess elements performing the function of impact incorporated into the scriptural allusions and estimate their role in the selection of other lexical units, construction of extended metaphors, syntactic shaping of particular fragments of the play. We draw a conclusion that via the extension of scriptural metaphorical complexes the author brings about a meaningful focus shift to ensure a protestant reinterpretation of the included biblical theses. A substantial share of stylistically marked elements undergoes semantic expansion and develops adherent connotations since they relate to the pivotal elements of the allusions.

scholarly journals A Sacral and Mythical Landscape: The Crimea in the East European Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-32
Author(s):  
Kerstin S. Jobst
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Crimean Peninsula ◽  
East European ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Political Agents

The Crimean peninsula plays a decisive role as a mythical place both in literature(e.g. by Goethe, Pushkin, Mickiewicz) and in many (pre-)national contexts and narratives: in the early modern period, for instance, the Polish nobility had developed the idea of its Sarmatian ancestry, an ethnos which in antiquity settled in the Black Sea area and the peninsula. German-speaking intellectuals in the 19th century developed an “enthusiasm for the Crimean Goths”.They believed that they had discovered their ancestors in the Gothic Crimean inhabitants, who had been extinct since early modern times. But above all the National Socialists attempted to legitimize their political claims to the peninsula. The mythical and legendary narrations associated with the Crimea in Russian culture, however, were particularly effective: The alleged baptism of Grand Duke Vladimir in Chersones in 988, which is said to have brought Christianity to the Kievan Ruś, plays a central role here, as do the numerous writers who drew inspiration from the Crimea. These narratives were used also by Russian political agents to legitimize the annexation of the Crimea in 2014.

Latin American Connections: Recent Work on German Interactions with Latin America

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Glenn Penny
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
South America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Mining Operations ◽  
Almost Everywhere ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
German Speaking

German interactions with Latin America have a long history. Indeed, early modern historians have demonstrated that people from German-speaking central Europe took part in all aspects of the European conquest of Central and South America. They have shown that these people were critical to mining operations and publishing in sixteenth-century Mexico; they have found them among Portuguese and Spanish sailors and soldiers almost everywhere; and they have located them playing important roles in a wide range of professions from Mexico to the south of Chile.

Between Isaac Newton and Enlightenment Newtonianism

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
J. B. Shank
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
New Physics ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Modern Cosmology ◽  
The Universe

A pervasive, and still stubbornly persuasive, Enlightenment story holds that Isaac Newton’s 1687 Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica played a decisive role in naturalizing early modern cosmology and physical science. Newton, however, was a committed, if heterodox Christian, and his new physics and astronomy depended crucially on a belief in God’s role as both the architect and ruling Pantokrator of the universe. Enlightenment naturalism, therefore, did not develop directly out of Newton’s Principia even if his new mathematical physics became a vehicle for disseminating it once a naturalist understanding of ‘Newtonianism’ had been forged by others. This chapter traces the genealogies that produced Newton and the cosmology of his Principia, along with the naturalizing alternative that contemporaries misleadingly called Enlightenment ‘Newtonianism’. It shows that while these had become entangled by 1800, their conjunction was a historical creation rather than an outcome determined directly by Newton or his science.

Rationalism, Platonism and God

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Common ◽  
Constructive Criticism ◽  
The Given ◽  
Platonic Tradition

This book comprises three main chapters on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It explores the common ground of the great early-modern rationalist theories, and provides an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. One chapter identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes’s cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and ‘contemplative’, the other modern and ‘controlling’. It finds the same tension in Descartes’s moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? The second chapter argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes’s Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology — like the physics — is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. The final chapter focuses on the Rationalists’ arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of ‘the priority of the perfect’, i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. It finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz’s for consideration. These chapters receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza.

Medieval and Early Modern alabaster exploitations in Germany: isotope fingerprints of the Forchtenberg and Witzenhausen deposits and their use in sculpture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfram Kloppmann ◽  
Lise Leroux ◽  
Philippe Bromblet ◽  
Pierre-Yves Le Pogam ◽  
Catherine Guerrot ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Harz Mountains ◽  
East European ◽  
Eastern Germany ◽  
East Midlands ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
O Isotope ◽  
Typical Range ◽  
The Church ◽  
Written Sources

<p>Medieval European alabaster exploitations were relatively limited in number though not in their geographical extension. The main alabaster-exploiting regions before the 16<sup>th</sup> century were situated in the English East Midlands, in Spain (Aragon, Catalonia), France (Alpine deposits, Provence) and in Germany (Harz mountains, Franconia). From the 16<sup>th</sup> and 17<sup>th</sup> century onwards, the use of alabaster in sculpture considerably increased and new deposits were discovered and exploited. In the French Jurassic mountains, the Saint Lothain quarries gained in renown, in Tuscany, the antique quarries around Volterra reopened and East European deposits became important, from Eastern Germany, over Poland to the Western Ukraine.</p><p>We present two historical alabaster quarries in Germany, comparatively well documented from written sources: the Witzenhausen alabaster, quarried in Hesse, east of Kassel first mentioned in 1458, and the Forchtenberg mine, in Württemberg, 70 km SW of Würzburg, exploited in the late 16<sup>th</sup> to 17<sup>th</sup> century by several generations of the same family of sculptors, the Kern dynasty.</p><p>We were able to localize the Witzenhausen deposits around the nearby village of Hundelshausen where Permian (“Zechstein”) evaporites outcrop and are still quarried for plaster production. Most of the encountered varieties are light to dark grey, strongly folded, with brecciated layers. The earliest surviving documented artwork made from this material dates back to 1516, the funeral monument of William II, Landgrave of Hesse (1469-1509), in the church St. Elisabeth, Marburg, Hesse, by the sculptor Ludwig Juppe. The Sr, S and O isotope signatures of the Hundelshausen quarries and the funeral monument are identical and fall in the typical range of Permian alabaster, which, together with the characteristic texture should enable us to identify this type of stone in artworks with unknown provenance.</p><p>The Forchtenberg alabaster was quarried from the mid-16<sup>th</sup> century onwards in galleries and was the privileged material of the Kern family whose house had a direct entry to the alabaster mine. Prominent members of this family are Michael Kern III (1580-1649), who worked for the counts of Hohenlohe and produced many monumental sculptural ensembles in alabaster and his younger brother Leonhard Kern, working in alabaster, ivory and wood, considered as one of the major sculptors of the German Baroque. The Forchtenberg alabaster of Triassic (Muschelkalk) age shows a very characteristic banking and its isotope fingerprints distinguish it from all other Triassic (Keuper) deposits so far investigated in S Germany, notably by a distinct enrichment in <sup>34</sup>S.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals THE MOBILE SYSTEM REDUCTION FOR THE VIBRATION CONTROL IMPLEMENTATION

2019 ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
V. V. Lopatin
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Random Noise ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Mathematical Methods ◽  
National Importance ◽  
System Reduction ◽  
Input And Output ◽  
Measurement Results ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Given

Since the mining and oil and gas industries play a decisive role in the Ukrainian economy, the adequacy and proper assessment of the accuracy of the monitoring is of great national importance. A mathematical model for the measurement of MSCs is constructed, which determines the sequence of mathematical operations that must be performed to obtain the quantitative characteristics of the objects of control. If there is a function that is a solution and that describes the object of the MSC, then it is a reduction to the ideal MSC. The solution of the problem of reduction (synthesis) MSC is realized by the choice of design and is provided with such a connection between the signals at its input and output MSC, which leads to the best results. This formulation of the problem of reducing the MSC has several disadvantages. The MSC measurement result is always influenced by a number of minor factors. Their effect leads to the fact that the measured value of a certain value is different from the value predicted by the model of measurement of the ISC on the noise (experiment error), which is random. The noise level of MSCs has a significant effect on the result of mathematical processing, and the less the noise, the better the result of the reduction of MSCs. Previously, the task of instrumentation was to create an MSC that provides the least distortion of the measurement results, while using mathematical methods to reduce instrumentation the task of reducing instrumentation noise is MSC. The given  solution is realized by the choice of design and is provided with such a connection between the input and output signals, which leads to a decrease in the level of random noise MSC. The description of MSC enhancement has the instability of the solution of the equation with respect to the initial data errors, which is a property of almost all integral equations and does not depend on the method of their solution. The proposed mathematical method of reduction of the mobile control system (MSC) as one of the variants of regularization of the incorrectly set problem arose and was further developed under the influence of the ideas of academician AN Tikhonov and Professor Yu.P. Pytiev .  The author suggests taking a different look at the control tasks and the accuracy of assessing the accuracy of MCSs by reducing the level of random noise. The author proposed the implementation of the MCS by choosing a design and providing such a connection between the signal at its input and output, which leads to the best results in solving reduction problems. The author proposed an adaptable model of MCSs using modern ideas and mathematical methods.

IN THE SHADOW OF LACEDAEMON: LUXURY, WEALTH AND EARLY-MODERN REPUBLICAN THOUGHT

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikola Regent
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Binary Opposition

The article examines Sparta’s influence on the treatment of luxury and wealth in early-modern republican thought, analyzing three key thinkers: Francesco Guicciardini, Montesquieu and Abbé de Mably. In this view, unnecessary wealth and, particularly, consumption over a certain limited level, is a pernicious extravagance that harms virtue and leads to corruption of the commonwealth that allows it. Both the direct influence of the Spartan example and the correlative Platonic ideal, inspired by the Lacedaemonians, are analyzed; the influence of Plutarch is emphasized. Special attention is given to the distinction between the Platonic account, with the twin dangers of both wealth and poverty, and a simpler, binary opposition of virtuous poverty vs. corrupting wealth. Guicciardini’s and Mably’s views are closely examined; for Montesquieu, the article traces the decisive role Plato plays in Montesquieu’s account of luxury, and analyzes his almost unknown work,Dialogue de Xantippe, showing the importance of Sparta for Montesquieu’s idea of republic.

scholarly journals Globalizing the Thirty Years War: Early German Newspapers and their Geopolitical Perspective on the Atlantic World*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Müller
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
South America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Temporal Integration ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
War News ◽  
German Newspapers

Abstract At the height of the Thirty Years War, news from South America, West Africa and the Caribbean was widespread and quickly distributed in the central European peripheries of the early modern Atlantic world. Despite the German retreat from sixteenth-century colonial experiments, overseas reports sometimes appeared in remote southern German towns before they were printed in Spain or the Low Countries. This article explains the vivid German interest in Atlantic news and examines how correspondents designed their overseas reports for a specifically German news market by connecting them to the European political and military situation, using a rhetorical frame of global conflict. While the domestic importance of American news was sometimes overstated by German newsmakers, its dissemination helps us understand how a sense of global connectedness emerged in a new print genre and created a discourse that supported the spatial and temporal integration of events around the globe.

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